The foundation of AI scalability: one team, one platform, one operating model

Albertsons Companies, operating ~2,300 stores with $80B in revenue, shares how it moved from fragmented AI experiments to a centralized AI core. The strategy follows a 'franchise model': common infrastructure, governance, and reusable accelerators at the center, with local innovation at the edges. Built on Databricks, the platform covers data engineering, ML, governance, and analytics. Four strategic AI bets — customer experience, merchandising intelligence, labor, and supply chain — focus the work. In 9 months, engineers accepted 1.38 million lines of AI-generated code with 90%+ adoption. Non-technical teams get low-code dashboards and drag-and-drop agentic tools. KPIs now track reuse rates, time to deployment, responsible AI compliance, and business outcomes tied to AI uplift.